


Without Hope

by Amber_and_Ash



Category: The Originals (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4782524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber_and_Ash/pseuds/Amber_and_Ash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dahlia realises she doesn't need to recruit Klaus to take Hope. While Klaus is daggered, everything falls apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Without Hope

In the deepest of his despair, Klaus had just started to hope. If Dahlia was working to turn him against his own family, then she intended to use him. She’d have to free him and that would give him to opportunity to strike. Except she didn’t.

“Oh, no,” she said, amused. “I will wake you from your sleep to raise your daughter once I have her safely bound to me, and our enemies out of the way or dead. Not before.”

“Why did you show me all of this, if not because you wanted my help in retrieving her?”

“I did have that as a backup plan, yes. But it won’t be needed. It seems my main opponent now is Freya. She has many excellent qualities: magical power, determination, ruthlessness. But intelligence? Well, let us just say there is a reason so many of her plans rely on brute force. She’s certainly no Klaus Mikaelson. I can assure you, dear boy, I shall not need your assistance to overcome the likes of her.”

“So you just expect me to lie here?”

"I have no objections to you watching,” she said. “But now I must go.”

Nothing he did could call her back, and nothing he did could free him from his prison. All that was left for him to do, was watch.

 

* * *

 

Klaus watched as Hayley decided not to be family, and his brother and sister agree that his daughter would be better off without him.

Klaus watched as Dahlia sprung Freya’s pathetic little trap and turned it back on his siblings, leaving them temporarily dead and unable to stop her.

Klaus watched as Dahlia used the blood from Klaus's own daggered body to track down his little girl and retrieve her. The entire werewolf pack provided the barest delay as she poisoned them all with a smoke-borne curse. She didn't even bother to move out of the rain she had caused or the bodies she had created as she bound her life to Hope's.

Klaus watched as Freya used Hayley and Klaus’s corpses to cast the spell that she promised would defeat Dahlia. Freya was right about the spell killing Dahlia, but wrong about it leaving Hope alive. As a result, Freya had only a few minutes to enjoy her freedom from her centuries old tormentor. With a viciousness Klaus so rarely saw in his brother, Elijah tore her to pieces and shipped those pieces to the ends of the earth. Freya was still alive in all of that, Klaus knew, and would one day be back to take her place inside the family drama.

Klaus watched, until finally (too late, far too late), watching ended.

 

* * *

 

His brother-- no, say instead Elijah-- offered his torn wrist. For a moment, Klaus considered spurning it in righteous indignation, but that would not bring back his daughter. The fire that had burned under his skin every moment of his life, mortal and immortal both, was now ashes. Despite his hunger, Klaus drew back after a minute. Elijah was seldom gauche enough to forcibly pull his arm away, but his usual body language to indicate when Klaus should cease feeding was missing. It seemed Elijah would make no protest if Klaus drained him dry, and that left the option unappealing. Klaus pulled himself out of his coffin and examined the half circle of tense people waiting on him instead.

Elijah said quietly, “Hope--”

“Do not say her name. You do not get to mention her to me.”

“You know what...?”

“Oh, I know everything. Our wonderful Aunt Dahlia made sure to make this my very own box seat to her little play. Not that she was anticipating the final act, I imagine. Suitably ironic that her fatal weakness turned out to be over-estimating the decency of family.”

Rebekah choked on tears, but no one felt it necessary to contradict his words.

They’d left the dagger at the side of his coffin like a macabre peace offering, and Klaus picked it up. A difference between his siblings and him – the more guilt he felt about a daggering, the more important he would think to keep the weapon in his own hands. He flipped it over and handed it handle first to Cami. “See that it gets back to my brother Kol, would you, my dear? As a 'welcome back to life' gift to the only family member innocent in all this.”

“Kol's alive again?” she asked.

“You really haven't been keeping up, have you? Your little harvest girl decided to become queen of all the witches, and was given one resurrection as a inauguration gift. I must say, I'm rather surprised she chose a lover of a few weeks above any member of her own family. Quite the charmer, our Kol, to inspire such devotion.”

Klaus looked at them and smirked, a familiar expression with an unfamiliar emotion behind it. “You needn't concern yourselves with standing guard. I assure you, I am not on the verge of a murderous rampage. In fact, I swear not to leave the compound until further notice. But I would like to be alone, so you’ll have to excuse me. Marcel, the quarter is all yours again. Unless, of course, you wanted it, Elijah?”

They looked between each other and him, but seemed incapable of response.

“Well, I'll leave it to the two of you to sort it out.”

Klaus hauled himself painfully up the stairs, ignoring any further attempts to detain him. He knew they’d think he’d be plotting terrible punishments for them all, but he had no interest in that. He had told his brother, not very long past, that he was capable of forgiveness. This time, Elijah would have to find his own. Just as Klaus would have to find his own.

They had an eternity without Hope to try.

 


End file.
